Watch titan triggerfish jump out of the water to catch and eat crabs

By Jake Buehler

Titan triggerfish sometimes hunt land-based prey

Matthew Tietbohl

Many land animals will dip beneath the waves to catch and eat fish, but the reverse situation can sometimes occur too, as the titan triggerfish demonstrates. The fish, which can grow to a length of 75 centimetres, will sometimes beach itself to feed on crabs walking along the shoreline.

In 2018, on the Red Sea’s Mar Mar Island, Matthew Tietbohl, a coral reef ecologist at King Abdullah University of Science & Technology in Saudi Arabia, was surveying a beach for sea turtle tracks with some colleagues. The team heard loud splashing at …